26 May Faculty music recital
Last year the music faculty gave their first recital for many years, and the second of what will hopefully be an annual series took place in Parker Hall on 15th March. Most people who were there (including over 100 students for what was a voluntary event) agreed that it even exceeded last year’s high standard.
The evening began with excerpts from a 700-year-old sitar solo, Raag Bihag, Alap, Jod and Jhala, played by Aloke Maiti. This was a melodic piece with some real virtuoso sections. Lindsay Boyd played Nocturno for Horn in F, Op. 7, by Franz Strauss. The programme notes highlighted Wagner’s love hate relationship with the horn player: “Strauss is an unbearable, curmudgeonly fellow, but when he plays his horn, one can say nothing, for it is so beautiful”.
Abe Okie sang a Vaughan Williams setting of a travel poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, “Whither Must I Wander”. Gayathri Parthasarathy played Franz Liszt’s impish and idiomatic “Dance of the Gnomes, and Sachi Angel played two flute pieces, “Winter Spirit”, by Katherine Hoover, and, with Kate Johnson, “Sonatina for Flute and Piano”, by Eldin Burton. Kate Johnson, who took the lead in organising this, her last recital at Woodstock, then played the first movement of JS Bach’s “Italian Concerto”, BWV 971.
Two contrasting vocal performances completed the bill. Heather Webb sang the traditional African-American spiritual “Deep River”, and Bethany Okie brought the house down with the closing song, “My New Philosophy”, from the musical “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown”.
The audience left, commenting on how blessed Woodstock is to have such talented music staff. Recordings and videos of the performance are already beginning to appear on the Woodstock Facebook site; please watch out for the complete recordings which will be on woodstock.bandcamp.com as soon as Mike Pesavento has time to finish the editing. In the meantime, there’s a lot of good music already there – check it out.
Photos by Phuriwat Chiraphisit, Development Associate, Photography
No Comments